M O O S Y - the next generation

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Attending the keynote at VMworld I am not hearing to much new things. What is striking is that they managed to get over 6.000 people to a EMEA show and more the 17.000 to their US show.

Is it hot? What? VIRTUALISATION!!! Yes it is. 2009 what the year where more virtual workloads existed the physical workloads. A growth of 28% in 2010 show you that it is hot! WHAT? Super HOT!

Cloud computing is the answer to assist companies growing their IT without the CapEx and lowering their OpEx. Companies can get the level of service when they need it, as much as they need it, for as long as they need it. That is where the CLOUD is big! Delivering what you need, when you need it, for just only the time you need it!

I am back in business. I will be focussing on the new virtualisation techniques I have come across. In the next few articles topics like "low cost disaster recovery", DRaaS" ,"migration to a virtual platform" and "Methods to sizing your Virtual Infrastructure" will be posted.

If you have any intresting topics you would like me to investigate and talk about feel free to send me a request.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

iMark writes:This post is about security, a very touchy subject when it comes to computer networks. The best computer security level you can accomplish is unplugging it from the network. However if you want to actually use your computer, balancing functionality against risk is the way to go.

The RiskIn my case, I want outside SSH access to my server with minimal risk. What is that risk? Password guessing by script kiddies. Many young hax0rs run a few scripts every night that randomly try thousands of different passwords on machines that are accessible over SSH.

The moment your machine is reachable on port 22, these scripts find you and your logs fill up with lines like these:

(You might need to change the 'eth0' part into your external interface, likely eth1 or ppp0 or similar. )What does this do? Whenever someone connects to your machines more than 3 times in two minutes, they are blocked for two minutes. This will effectively stop all password guessing scripts; they usually cannot handle this and crash or hang.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

iMark writes:I have a network with a Thomson SpeedTouch router which is my default gateway. Next to this, I have another computer on the network which is a router for a secondary subnet (with virtual machines).

My problem: I want the SpeedTouch to automatically handle this route, however there is no option in the web interface (at least on my ISP's version) to add routes.

My solution: add a static route using the telnet interface. Just telnet to your router using the telnet command and use the rtadd option:

TIP: backspace in the CLI is Ctrl-H.Now you are ready to test the new route from your workstation. Using ping on the commandline, you can see the route's effect through the redirect messages (at least on Linux):

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Friday, November 27, 2009

So... of course you are logged into Google Wave all of the time, looking for new blips in your wavelets constantly. When, by chance, you have logged out, navigated away from Wave, or whatever, it would be nice to be notified when updates have occurred, wouldn't it?

Since (almost) everyone has a Google Wave account by now, it's time to show some cool stuff you can do with it. Basically wave is an extensible information bus. One type of extension is called a Gadget and can be embedded in wave messages (called blips). Here, we show you how to add them, which ones are cool, and where to find the complete list.

Adding a gadget

An external gadget is some form of functionality for wave that someone has published on the net. When you add a new blip to a wave, you can see the green puzzle-piece icon in the wave toolbar. Click on it, and you are presented with a URL dialog. Enter the gadget URL (Our example is Pinwand: http://michael-hielscher.de/PinwandWeb/PinwandGadget.xml ) and click Add.

Now the gadget will load into your blip and you can use it. In our case, a pinboard is loaded to which all participants of the wave can post notes.

Cool gadgets

Here is a list of some cool gadgets to explore (which actually work):* Pinwand Gadget - http://michael-hielscher.de/PinwandWeb/PinwandGadget.xmlOur example. With this gadget you can add a real time pinboard to your wave. Everybody can add messages to the board or give comments. The person who created the board becomes the administrator who can setup the board. * Mind Map - http://cactus-wave.appspot.com/net.brucecooper.mindmapgadget.MindMapGadget/net.brucecooper.mindmapgadget.client.MindMapGadget.gadget.xmlAllows collaborative editing of a shared MindMap, using the wave's state to store information. Supports Drag & Drop, Import & Export, Icons and voting.* Checky - http://wave-gadgets.appspot.com/checky.xmlBasecamp-like checklists with drag-and-drop.

Friday, November 20, 2009

I went to San Fransisco to visit VMWorld 2009. One of their main topics where around the VDI proposition. I have been doing some research and found that at this point there are two major players; VMWARE and Citrix who currently offer a nice VDI package. However; Novell will be comming out with their Inteligent Workload Management environment. A XEN based solution with alot of Identity Management around it.

This is all good and well...but how does this help organisations? Well, alot...but just implementing a VDI solution is doomed to fail.

Therefor I have been looking at ways to do a true assessment of the requirements around a VDI solution; And The Priest has found one. It is from LiquidWareLabs and it is called Stratusphere! An awsome way to really know what performance the current desktops use. And an awsome way to size your backend before you begin. No undersizing, no oversizing!

I will blog more around Novell's Intelligent Workload Management is the near future. It is gonna be hot! Sizzling Hot!

Last week we bought a new BluRay player, the LG BD390, one of the main reasons for this player is its network capabilities; wired and wireless.Installation of the player was a piece of cake, connecting to a linux server took some configuration (on the linux backend) but that will be discussed in a future article.

For now we can stream movie content directly into the livingroom without a hassle, play BluRay movies out of the box and watch youtube content directly.